Pet Battle Leveling – The Quick and Somewhat Easy Way!

****THIS GUIDE IS CURRENTLY OUTDATED! Please see my updated guide for more up to date information!!****

Hey again everyone! I’m planning on doing a general pet battle guide to help newbies to the system out but I figured I’d go ahead and get this leveling guide out of the way since quite a few people have been asking about speedy ways to level your pets!

There is a method besides the plain old “battle pets 1-2 levels above you and patiently earn your exp” that is bonkers good and requires a bit of luck at first, but once you get the hang of it you’ll get getting your pet leveling achievements in no time. It doesn’t involve any shady tactics, and since there’s no exp share or ability to switch between pets after victories in PVP battles – I figured I would share this method with everyone.

It’s important to note before I get started that for this method you MUST have at least two pets to level 25 already. If you’ve already done a bit of battling and pet trainer achievements, this probably isn’t an issue for you. If you DON’T have two level 25 pets yet, your best bet is to stick to the tried and true wild pet grinding method. On to the guide!

Starting with a level 1 pet

If you are starting with a level 1 pet you’ll want to head out to an area in Pandaria with level 23-24 pets, preferably turtles or frogs. The areas in jade forest are great for this as they’re full of emerald turtles and valley frogs. The idea is to fight a level 23-24 wild pet that has a defensive/non-damaging move in its rotation. The frogs have a tranquility move and the turtles have a shell shield move. Neither of these moves do damage.

Place your level 1 at the front of your party with your two level 25s with it. Engage in battle with a turtle or a frog. It’s important to note that in order for your pet to get exp from the battle it MUST do an attack before being switched out. This is where the defensive enemy moves come into play. Your level 1 pet will always go second, but with luck the turtle/frog will use one of its defensive moves and not do any damage. After your level 1 pet does its initial hit, immediately swap it out with one of your level 25s. Kill off the enemy pet party and enjoy as your level 1 pet gains 400+ exp in a single fight. This usually pushes them to around level 4.

If you get unlucky and the turtle/frog attacks and KOs your first pet, no big deal. Forfeit the fight and head to a stable master to heal up and try again. This method is a lot easier with mechanical and magic pets because mechanicals come back to life after being KOed, and magic pets cannot be dealt more than 50% of their HP in a single hit.

Once your pet is level 4+, it can easily take a hit from a level 23-24 enemy so your job just got a lot easier. Rinse and repeat this method until around level 14-15.

If you’re going for the “no favorites” achievement (level a pet of each family to level 10) this is your best way of doing it. It’s also a good way to get a few levels on a pet to see if its stats are going to be decent.

Level 14+

So now your pet is higher level and we can switch things up a bit. The leveling method gets a tad bit more time consuming at this point, but it still beats hours of grinding on lower level wild pets.

At this point you want to switch one of your level 25s with your lower level pet. At this point you don’t really need to be fighting any specific wild pets, but you’ll probably want to try and stay away from the ones that are strong against the one you’re trying to level either way. As always, make sure you’re near a stable master for quicker healing after fights.

Engage a wild pet and use your level 25 to kill off the first two enemies. Once you get to the third enemy, use lower damage skills to whittle its health down to around 200-100ish HP. It’s easier if you try to avoid fighting pets that have healing abilities as well.

At this point you’re going to want to just keep using the pass button to pass up your turns and let your level 25 pet die. Cruel, I know, but it’s for the benefit of the team. Once your level 25 pet kicks the bucket – send in your lower level pet. Even at level 14ish it should have a move that deals 100+ damage, and it should be able to survive a couple of turns in case you miss. Spam that damage move and hopefully the last enemy pet will die. Marvel and enjoy as your lower level pet reaps the benefits of ALL of the exp from the enemy team since your first pet died. In level 23-24 pet battles against common/rare pets, this is usually 800+ exp.

Here’s a quick video I did to show this method in action and also prove it works. (Make sure you flip it to 480 quality so it’s easier to see!)

So now that you know the technique, enjoy powerleveling your pets. A more in depth pet battling guide will be coming soon!

Farming: From Citypaw to Tillers Expert!

Hey guys! So, one of my favorite new features in Mists is the addition of farming. Contrary to popular belief – the farming in game has nothing in common with farmville and is more based on the old school Harvest Moon games. That’s part of the reason I love it so much!

Farming is a great way to get food to level cooking or make feasts or even to get mats for your crafting professions. Barring any of that, you can always sell the stuff you farm up as well. The excellent thing is that for a minimum amount of time every day you can easily get enough crafting or food materials to get any transmutes or whatever that you need done.

Below is an illustrated guide to farming. I’m going to go through the basics of running your farm and then move on to tips to really help you make the most of your farming experience. If you need to get to a certain section, feel free to search for the section title/number.

Contents:

Step 1: The basics!

Step 2: Harvesting for fun and profit!

Step 3: Bonus crops!

Step 4: And you get a gift, and you get a gift, and you get a gift!

Step 5: Expanding!

Step 6: Making the most out of your farm!

Step 1: The basics!

To unlock your farm you first need to go to Halfhill in the valley of the four winds and start the questline at Farmer Yoon. You’ll watch some cutscenes and run some errands and then be able to start working your 4 soil plot. If you are under level 90 the most you will be able to do is these starting quests and plant/harvest veggies from your plots. You CANNOT gain rep to expand your farm OR find dark soil to give gifts until you are level 90. But in the meantime at least you can farm yourself some cooking mats.

First you need to familiarize yourself with your farming tools.

When you grab one of the items it’ll automatically go into your bags. After you’re through using it you can delete it from your bags and it will be placed back into the spot from the above picture. So don’t worry about cluttered bagspace – just use the items to do your daily farming and then delete them.

The bug sprayer is to clear off your infested crops, the watering can is to water your parched crops, the shovel is to dig up any unwanted crops, and the plow allows you to til several plots at a time. You will receive the plow upon reaching exalted with the tillers and purchasing it from Gina Mudclaw.

Now that you’ve got your tools, it’s time to get to work! You cannot plant seeds in your plots until you til the soil. Hold your mouse cursor over the soil and click and your character will automatically til the soil for you.

Occasionally you will see dust flying out of your untilled soil

This means that before you can til that plot you will need to click on it to clear out a nasty vermin that’s squatting under your plots! Click it, kill the pest, and then click again to til your soil.

Sometimes after harvesting a weed will also grow in the plot. You’ll need to click on the weed and use the pull command that comes up on a new actionbar several times to get it out before you can til it again!

Now that your soil is ready for planting, you’ll need to go buy some seeds! Initially you will only be able to purchase basic food seeds to plant, which is fine because you’ll most likely need the ingredients to level your cooking. Additionally, every day farmer Yoon will give you a daily to plant a specific veggie. This is probably the EASIEST daily currently in the game, so don’t pass up your practically free charms.

Head on out to the seed vendor just a short distance away in Halfhill to stock up.

Once you hit higher rep levels with the tillers some special seeds will unlock!

This is when farming starts to really pay off. You can plant seeds that will generate a random herb, drop leather or ore, enchanting mats, and even motes of harmony!

The sapling seeds that you see here will yield a usable tree item that can be planted one time. It’s a neat vanity item if you’re into that kind of thing, but TBH your farm plots are better saved for mats that you can use or sell.

So now you’ve got your seeds. Time to plant them! Head back to your farm and open your bags. Click on one of your plots of tilled soil and then right click on the seed in your bag to plant it.

Rinse and repeat throughout your available land plots.

As you plant you’ll notice that your crops just…don’t look right! You still have some work to do with them before they’ll be growing properly!

Each plant will have a different problem that you’ll need to resolve before it can grow.

Parched plants will look dusty and dried out. This is simple! Grab your watering can and give’em a drink! They’ll be back to normal in no time.

Alluring plants will have a sunbeam shining down on them. This means that they’re extra appealing to flying pests. Click on your plant and fight off the nasty plainshawk that swoops down and tries to steal it.

Infested plants will turn green and have gross bugs flying all around them. Grab your bug sprayer and get rid of the bugs and your plant will be good as new!

The poor runty plants are stuck and can’t grow properly! Click on it and wait for the command to jump to appear. Once it does, jump and you’ll pop it right out of the ground so it can grow fully!

Tangled plants are just absolutely covered in weeds. You’ll need to click on them and then run forward -

to pull all the weeds off!

Wiggling plants squirm and move around. Why, you ask? Virmen, of course. Click on the plant and then kill off the pest when it pops out. No remorse for veggie stealers!

Sometimes when you plant two types of weeds will also spring up. The regular type is the same kind that tends to appear after you harvest your crops. Grab it and hit the pull button repeatedly to pull it out.

The other type is a nasty weed that looks a bit like a tentacle. You’ll need to grab onto the weed and when the new actionbar pops up – spam the 1 button to flex at it…I guess to show superiority…because weeds are intimidated by that somehow. Every few seconds the weed will cast a ground slam on you. Use the 2 button to use your bite attack to interrupt it, then go back to spamming one. You need to get up to 50 stacks of the flexing buff to get the weed to go away.

After all that hard work your plants will be happy and start growing! They’ll be ready to harvest the next day!

Step 2: Harvesting for fun and profit!

Upon returning to your farm after a day you’ll surely be thrilled to see a field of fresh crops just waiting to be picked!

This is the fun and really easy part. Just go up to your crops and click on them to harvest! For each crop you harvest at level 90 you will receive 55 tillers rep.

You’ll notice as you go that once you pick the crops the soil will return to its untilled state. Yep! That means you get to repeat the whole tilling and planting cycle again. But hey, it beats the heck out of fishing.

Step 3: Bonus crops!

Sometimes when you plant you will get lucky and immediately receive a bursting crop after planting. A bursting crop can be harvested immediately and will net you 3 extra crops. The added bonus to this is that you can immediately re-till the soil and replant a new crop without waiting a day.

Additionally, in the picture I showed above you can see that I have a plump green cabbage. Plump crops also yield extra crops for you. They’re slightly more common than bursting crops, and as you can see they’re a lot larger than your regular crops so you’ll be able to tell when you have one. Plump crops DO require the full day to grow, unlike the bursting crops that grow immediately.

Another way to get more yield from your crops is to find out what that day’s special crop is. To find out you’ll need to go into Halfhill and speak to Jogu the drunk, who lives in the pond.

He will predict which crops will have a larger yield the next day. Please note that this ONLY applies to the veggie crops and not any of the special crops. If you plant the crop he tells you to, you’ll usually get an extra 2-3 veggies from that crop the next day.

Some days Jogu is “foggy” (aka hungover) and won’t be able to give you a prediction.

Step 4: And you get a gift, and you get a gift, and you get a gift!

The fun thing about the tillers is that besides the regular tillers rep that you get from doing your dailies and harvesting plants, several characters around the valley have buddy reputations you can raise. You can raise them from stranger, to acquaintance, to buddy, to friend, to good friend and then finally – best friend.

When you reach best friends with a person they will send you a gift for your farm. Once you’re exalted with the tillers they’ll also be willing to come hang out on your farm as well. They won’t actually do anything, but it’s nice to give farmer Yoon some company.

When you are harvesting crops you may sometimes receive a blue item like this marsh lily:

These are the items that you can gift to the tillers folks to raise their friendship level. The item will tell you which of the 2 tillers favors it. If you give a favored gift to someone it will net you 900 (990 w/guild perk) rep. A non-favored gift will still get you 540 (550 w/guild perk) rep.

The tillers members will also accept their favorite food once per day. WoWpedia has a great list of which foods/mats are needed for this. Click here to view it!

Some days certain tillers members will also visit Halfhill market and offer a daily quest. Andi, the cub that hangs out by your farm, will also offer a daily quest to give a gift to someone. These quests will get you both tillers rep AND friend rep with that specific person.

The nice thing about buddy rep is that unlike honored/revered with regular rep, the amount of rep you need to reach the next level does NOT go up as their friendship level increases. It stays at a flat rate. This means you only need to do a set amount of turnins rather than worrying about the required rep amount doubling or tripling as you get their friendship up!

The friendship bar will show next to their portrait when you talk to them. You can also view your current rep in your rep character tab as well.

If you’re trying to raise your friend rep as quickly as possible the best way to do it is to look for dark soil patches throughout Pandaria.

When you are level 90 you can loot these soil patches to receive one of the blue gift items. These patches spawn all over Pandaria but the area they pop in the most is around the Heartland. If you’re trying to grind rep you’ll want to keep in mind that sometimes the soil patches can be a little hard to see as they tend to blend into the ground a bit.

If you cycle around the heartland a couple of times a day you can usually find 7-10 soil patches easily – depending on how many other people are out there looking.

The BEST way to do it is to pick one set of tillers from each blue item and raise your rep with them first. So for example, if I find a ruby shard I decide that for now I want to raise my rep with Tina Mudclaw instead of bothering with Haohan. I take all my ruby shards to her. Then, once she is at best friend status, I start taking them to Haohan instead.

Once you start getting all the characters to best friend, you can start tossing the gifts at any old person. Non-favored gifts still give 500+ rep.

Your new best friends will usually send you a seed pack and some cool vanity items for your farm. Jogu will also stop charging you for his crop predictions as well.

Now if you are trying to find Sho please use the following marker:

As the marker Gina gives you is completely off.

Step 5: Expanding!

So you want more than 4 farm plots eh? Well you gotta work for it!

As you gain rep with the tillers from harvesting and doing daily quests, Farmer Yoon will give you quests to speak to various tillers to increase the size of the farm.

Your first expansion should come at honored, which is fairly easy to get. You’ll need to gather some weed killer and then have the weeds cleared off your farm.

The next expansion comes at revered and you’ll get that pesky wagon removed and unlock 4 more soil patches. The final expansion comes at exalted AFTER you have finished the tillers questline. I won’t spoil that story for you, but you will want to make sure you are doing ALL the quests to gain the specific tillers’ votes. if you do NOT have all the tillers’ votes you will NOT get the last expansion.

As your farm expands you can talk to Gina Mudclaw to buy some tool upgrades. The first of which are the Jinyu princess irrigation spouts. You can click on them and they will automatically water all your parched plants!

The second is a pest killer. Clicking on it will automatically kill off any bugs/clear out your infested plants. Note that it does NOT clear out weeds, virmen, or plainshawks!

The last upgrade is the swanky plot I had pictured way above. If you use the plow in a straight line across your untilled plots, it will automatically til them for you! Out of all the upgrades, this one will definitely save you the most time. To get it you need to be exalted and have all 16 of your farm plots unlocked.

After much farming and reputation gaining you’ll soon have a beautiful farm to call your own!

With a yak! Woo!

Step 6: Making the most out of your farm!

Okay so now you’re practically a farming pro, right? Got your yak, got your 16 soil plots? Good!

The best part about your farm is the fact that it is a guaranteed daily source of crafting mats AND motes of harmony depending on what you plant. With 16 planting spots available there are many, many combinations you can use to try and get a good yield.

It’s important to note that your current professions have no bearing on what you can and can’t plant. This means that as a tailor and an enchanter I can still plant the seeds that grant a random herb or the seeds that grant random ore. For raiders this means that you can help get mats for flasks, feasts, enchants, etc. For non-raiders it means you can sell said items to the raiders for their flasks, feasts, enchants, etc. Haha!

Personally I usually reserve the back 8 land plots for songbell seeds/motes of harmony. This means that I get 8 motes baseline daily, and I usually get the other 2 as I do my other daily quests. Bam, guaranteed spirit of harmony every single day. This also allows you to use your other 8 plots for other things.

One of your plots is usually going to be used up by Farmer Yoon’s random daily veggie quest. Personally, I let that veggie grow and stick it in the guild bank for other folks leveling cooking. I usually plant either windshear cactus (cloth) or magebulb(enchanting mats) around the veggie since I’m a tailor/enchanter.I don’t usually need that much cloth but I usually plant it every other day so I can keep doing my cloth transmute daily.

I also usually use four plots for enigma seeds. Enigma seeds are the ones that grow into a random Pandaria herb. The bonus to harvesting these seeds is that not only do you get the herb, but you also have a shot at getting spirits.

Spirits are items that herbalists usually get when they loot plants in the wild. Now you, as a farmer, can get them too! There’s one that restores HP and one that restores mana. These items DO share a cooldown with potions BUT if you don’t have a good source of potions and don’t want to buy them off the AH, here’s a good alternative for you!

Depending on what sells for more on your server you can base your daily seed selection on whatever is priciest at the same. Or you can just keep yourself covered in mats that you may need!

********

And so that’s it! I hope this guide was helpful to all the novice farmers out there! Farming has truly been a GREAT addition to this game, and anyone that doesn’t take advantage of it is ridiculous. Let’s all cross our fingers that Blizzard adds more fun and useful content like this in the future!

The Story So Far…

So Theramore? How about it? It was certainly a thing. Yep. Certainly a thing.

Before I go on in this post I would like to warn people that there ARE spoilers for the Tides of War book lurking around. If you’re planning on reading the book you may want to skip the spoiler labeled areas.

As a service to people who had no clue what happened during the Theramore scenario, I wrote up a fairly detailed *spoilers* summary of the book on the forums.

The major things to pick up from the book that were…sort of…in game are thus:

*MORE SPOILERS BELOOOOOWWWW!*

*Forreal*

—————-

—-

1) Rhonin is dead. Jaina now leads the Kirin’tor.

2) A whole bunch of alliance generals are dead, including Marcus Jonathan. He was the mounted guy that sat at the entrance to Stormwind who would wave to you.

3) In his pursuit of the “Orcs are superior” mentality, Garrosh has allowed the blackrock orcs along with the dragonmaw orcs to join the Horde. Yes, the same blackrock orcs that waged war under the “warchief” Rend Blackhand.

4) Thrall does not care.Well, sort of. He didn’t care that Northwatch was wiped off the map by a group of demonically summoned magma elementals. This is something that goes against almost every shaman’s code because it’s part of why Draenor (outland) was destroyed. He also didn’t care that Theramore was decimated by a bomb so powerful it tore holes to other dimensions and wiped out entire timelines. He DID care that Jaina was going to flood Orgrimmar, so his neutrality went out the window when Org was involved. They tried to play it off by claiming it was because the water elementals reached out to him, but I guess the magma elementals didn’t matter? Oh and they wrote it off as a “thank goodness Thrall stopped Jaina because she would have killed Varian too!” to try and make it better. Convenient post-plot writing at its best.

5) Garrosh is recruiting children into the horde war machine at this point.

6) Both the alliance and horde navies were decimated by the end of the book. This leaves a small skeleton crew warring on the open seas which is how the ships end up finding Pandaria.

7) Jaina and Kalecgos sitting in a tree. B-L-E-E-G.

Please don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book as I do most of Christie Golden’s writing. However, there were some very…problematic plot holes and twists for the sake of convenience. At the start of the book Jaina goes to talk to Thrall about her issues with Garrosh and Thrall’s response is, “It’s not my problem. By the way, have you considered finding a boyfriend to even your temper out?” And like magic Kalecgos appears. Shazzam! Just like Aggra! Why work through a character’s issues using plot and character development when you can just throw a boyfriend/girlfriend in there to fix it all up? It’s funny because in real life it’s almost the exact opposite. You can’t be in a solid relationship unless you work your own issues out first. Thankfully it’s a fantasy world in more ways than one.

So they’re finally starting to throw Garrosh off the deep end. Now begins his descent into madness. The question is, why now? I would argue that it’s pressure from the fans. But for an in story excuse several reasons have been brought up:

1) Traces of Mannoroth’s fel energy corrupting him through his armor.

2) Sargeras and the burning legion

3) An as yet unnamed old God. But this one comes up EVERY TIME someone gets corrupted because old Gods are like the default answer in WoW. “What caused this? Oh an old God. Carry on then.”

Or any combination of the three along with the pressure of wanting to be great like his father.

One thing is painfully clear though – the burning legion is coming back and will most likely be the focus of the next expansion. They’re setting us up so that the horde and alliance are so entrenched in war again that invasion will be simple with our depleted resources. Methinks they’ve attempted this before!

Wrathion obviously knows this. He tells the player as much. It will also probably be the catalyst of Illidan Stormrage being brought back to life. Metzen has said he wants Illidan alive again and quests in game explain that even completely disemboweled demon hunters can come back to life with the power of an equal or stronger demon to resurrect them. It doesn’t get much stronger than Sargeras or Kil’jaeden. Expect Illidan back soon!

So what are my predictions? Well I just gave you some of them. I have a strong hunch that when Garrosh is defeated the catalyst of us fighting him will be because he’s bringing the legion back to Azeroth. Dave Kosak mentioned that even Thrall was getting involved hordeside for the siege of Orgrimmar. What would be bad enough to bring Thrall back? Maybe the signs of the legion he fought previously at the battle of Hyjal?

So Garrosh brings back the legion one way or another. The alliance and horde end up having to team up in their own ways. What do I see? I see an older Prince Anduin Wrynn leading the combined forces of the horde and alliance into battle against the legion. Given how they’ve set him up with him being the tolerant alliance NPC with ties to the horde who trained under Velen, he’s the obvious choice along with whoever is leading the horde at the time.

And WHO exactly is going to lead the horde? Lots of ideas flying around. Honestly? I’m not even sure. My hope would be a combined council of Baine Bloodhoof and Vol’jin.

People have suggested that Garrosh will end up kidnapping Thrall’s child and using blackrock orc magic to age him in the hopes of getting Thrall on his side. Then once Garrosh is deposed – Thrall’s child will take over. If this happens, I’ma be angry. Why? Because COME ON. If any lore developers are reading this, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. This game does NOT need more “superman” characters. Med’an was a terrible character and the experience with him should never be repeated, let alone with Thrall’s son or daughter.

Truthfully I don’t see Garrosh dying. I see him splitting off the orc factions of the horde (draenor, blackrock, and dragonmaw) and becoming the next Rend Blackhand, potentially with Magatha’s grimtotem helping him out.

Either way it will be interesting to see how Pandaria will play out from a lore perspective. I’ve argued until I was blue in the face that the alliance and horde are the main villains in this expansion. We’re taking territorial invasion to a whole new level. Pandaria will be lucky if there’s anything left after we leave.

So what do you think is up with the lore? I’m pretty passionate about the story in this game. It’s fun to have a reason to read all the quests!

The Evolution of a Raider

With another expansion knocking on our door I wanted to pause for a moment and reflect on my last -8 years- of playing World of Warcraft. Some would boggle at the fact that I’ve been playing this game for so long, but remember that playing an MMO isn’t like constantly replaying a console game. MMOs need to stay new and introduce content in order to stay afloat. There are older MMOs than WoW, and people who have no doubt played them consistently since their launch.

My feelings towards WoW have changed over the years. I’ve built a persona for myself that is mainly goofy, light-hearted, and sassy when the time comes for it. A lot of people may not take me seriously but let me just say that I’ve been there. I’ve seen things. I’ve played this game for longer than some of the developers have. I would never presume that I know all there is to know about WoW, but I know what I’ve seen and experienced.

I knew when I started playing  vanilla and saw the people in their t1 and t2 sets (other raids weren’t released at the time) that I wanted to be like them. I also wanted to be a badass at PVP like the high warlord videos I was seeing on youtube all over the place. I played a shaman, and I was terrible at it. But the fact of the matter was that in vanilla if you could spec resto, drop totems regularly, and use your healing wave button, you could make it in a raid.

I’ve always been predisposed to healing classes – ever since I started playing RPGs and would always – ALWAYS build at least one or two white mages to buffer my parties. The same was true when I started playing MUDs – always a cleric. Healing comes easily and naturally to me, both active and reactive. Maybe that predisposition is what carried me through being a 40-man healer and onward, despite being so terrible that I actually kept my auto attack button bound on my bars.

By sheer happenstance I was invited into an MC raid with my first guild. In the 40man days it didn’t really matter what the player was like as long as they were a warm body. Because of this, I started getting invited to more raids until finally I was invited to the guild and put on the roster. Vanilla raiding was a flurry of 5 hour raid nights and DKP.. It would, quite literally, take weeks for someone to get an upgrade. Between the RNG loot system (which originally didn’t differentiate between alliance and horde so horde would get paladin loot and vice versa.) and the fact that you had 40 people, up to 5 other people of your class playing in the same raid, it took absolutely ages to get a full set of gear. And when you did, the next raid tier was usually out anyway.

Vanilla was probably the most meaningful raid experience for me because it was my first. You ALWAYS remember your first, whether you want to or not. I make no qualms about the difficulty of the encounters or the hardships of organizing a 40man raiding guild.

In vanilla we cleared MC, BWL, the world dragons, ZG, AQ20, some of AQ40, and some of Naxx. I’m probably forgetting some encounters. I can look back upon these days with rose-tinted glasses but the truth of the matter is that it took a lot of time. A lot of time and dedication to do what we did. At that point in my life I was a college student so I had pretty much all the time in the world. No job, freshman in college so I wasn’t doing the harder classes yet – yeah I was pretty much open to sitting there for hours or farming dukes in Silithus in my off time.

Then The Burning Crusade was released and everything changed when the fire nation attacked. At this point the first real TBC dungeon was Kara, and 40man raiding guilds utterly panicked.The whole system was changed – like the rug was pulled out from under us. The start of TBC was a rocky time for most guilds with drama and splintering all over the place on every server. My guild was one such casualty of this, and so I took a long break after raiding through Kara and Gruul’s lair.

I came back and leveled a mage allianceside and picked up where I left off. I raided through SSC, TK, BT, and Hyjal – quitting just before Sunwell was released.

Mechanics started to change – as if the developers were coming into their own and breaking free of the Everquest style raid traditions of time spent + damage done + damage taken = loot. Instead of standing in one place decursing, now people had to run around a platform or throw an item to each other. To those of us from vanilla, this was huge. It was a huge change. “But my tears were broken!”

At this time I was still in college messing around. Still had time on my hands, still could sit around and farm rep until I had a Netherdrake when they were current. I had Blue Suede Shoes and I loved them.

Then came the Wrath. The Wrath of the Lich King. To its credit, WoTLK continued the idea of revolutionizing game mechanics at their core. Suddenly vehicle quests were a reality. Gone were the days of collecting 28 bear asses for Grogg Orctooth in the barrens. Now we rode on harpoons and horses escaping from worgen and vrykul.

I continued raiding in WoTLK on my mage. I got through the original Naxx, Malygos, and Sarth before taking a break. I came back around the tail end of Ulduar and the introduction to Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Now mechanics were getting weirder. Shoot down frost patches, run around catching light and dark orbs, pilot tanks through a warzone. All of this was a strange new world, but it was fun!

It was around this time that I was on my own looking for a job. Suddenly I had less time than I used to and way less of a drive to keep playing at the level I was before. In the grand scheme of things, WoW and raiding got bumped a tier lower on my hierarchy of needs. I played through most of ICC, but their arbitrary gating of content dragged the dungeon out far longer than it needed to be. Once the frostwing halls opened I had already been raiding ICC for a good while and I was sick of it, even without seeing the last few bosses. It was at that point that I quit playing until the release of Cataclysm.

With the news of Cataclysm, I was totally pumped for what it would bring. I think at the first glimpses of the expansion we all had ideas in our heads of what would change and how much we would enjoy the new content. I wouldn’t say that Cataclysm was a failed expansion – but I would say that the resources for it were placed in areas that most players didn’t fully experience. I enjoyed the new questing and revamped zones, but I will openly admit there was very little for my level 85 character to do after getting to 85. It was at this point that I decided to go back to my roots and start playing a healer again – and Gloriia the worgen priest was created.

I picked up my raiding pants and tried to be serious again with the T11 content. Anyone who played T11 content when people were still working for world firsts can tell you that it was brutal. In a misguided attempt to harken back to vanilla raiding/dungeon difficulty (which was an arbitrary difficulty made from gear checks and resistance fights) they had destroyed many of the things that made playing fun. Suddenly being a healer was a weird sort of punishment. I logged in daily and hated playing my own class. It just…wasn’t fun!

One day when we were attempting the Nef/Ony fight I realized that I was no longer having fun wiping over and over again to progression fights. Gone were the days of being in MC when I would happily sit there and run back after wiping to lava packs. That sense of pride I had at being the best had all but deteriorated as well. So here I was  – not having fun and to me not having a reason to continue punishing myself by playing something I wasn’t enjoying.

When I was younger I probably would have just slogged through the feelings and kept going. But now that I was older – on my own, working, having played WoW for about 6-7 years, I knew that there was no point in making myself miserable on my own dime when there were plenty of other things I could be doing. If there is such a thing as a transition to being a casual player – this is when I went through it.

Unfortunately without raiding at that point in Cataclysm, there was very little to do. And I quit for a good while before ultimately coming back at the tail end of Firelands to play with the guild I am in now. At some point after dragon soul came out a group of us decided to try our hand at raiding again, and thankfully Blizzard added in Looking for Raid and the buff to DS. This made it possible for us to go in a very limited schedule and still be able to briefly experience the hayday glory of killing raid bosses again.

The large majority of the raid I run now is made up of former hardcore raiders that at this point have hit the raiding retirement home. We want to go in and see content but not deal with whippersnappers and hoozawhatsits.

I think that on the whole there are a lot of players exactly like me and Blizzard acknowledges that – that is why they put in some of the changes like the buffs/nerfs as content gets older. The raiding scene is a cycle. People constantly enter it with fresh faces gunning for world firsts because they’re like me when I first started. They have the time, the drive, and the pride. Eventually time drags on and people get to the point I’m at now, but by then there’s even more newer raiders lining up to take their places in the server first guilds.

So here is the challenge that comes with raid balancing. On the one hand you have the raider me from 7 years ago looking for content to constantly devour while wanting to be the absolute best. On the other hand you have the raider me from now that just wants to go in, kill a boss, then go to IHOP for the early bird special.

Striking a balance between the two is difficult, but I think most players understand the benefit of changes like Looking For Raid and slow, gradual nerfs to content that people have already downed. Do I think the DS debuff went in too quickly? Yes. But overall I think it was a good addition.

The only thing I can say with 100% certainty that I hate involving raiding is arbitrary content blocks. I touched on this in my WoWInsider interview but the blocking of ICC by wing was what caused me to quit for MONTHS in WoTLK. If I want to go in and down the content – let me do so. If an encounter is difficult it will prevent me from progressing in the natural way. Content blocks serve no purpose outside of frustrating the raiders that genuinely want to go in and down content while it is interesting to them. If you push them away by blocking it off, the chances are VERY LIKELY that they will get bored before even getting through it. At least if they blow through it quickly and start to get bored they can set up things like achievement runs or alt runs to keep themselves occupied.

That said…

At this point in my raiding career I do not presume to know how upper tier guilds run because I don’t want to. Because of that I rarely argue on the forums involving bleeding edge content. All I can do is argue from my perspective as a lower end raider for the things that would be enjoyable for me while not detracting from what OTHERS enjoy. It would be nice if everyone shared this philosophy, but such is the way of the forums.

In my 8 years playing I’ve seen and done a lot. Rarely do I look back on my time spent playing with such clarity but I feel like people deserve to know who I am as a WoW player and where I come from when I discuss certain things. It frustrates me to no end to not be listened to either by the developers, community managers, or my peers because of my goofy exterior persona. Maybe, just maybe, I know what I’m talking about when I say the things I do.

Looking at WoW from Another Angle

First and foremost this is not an image heavy post, so sorry in advance for the lack of lols. Also as a second warning, this post is heavy in the metaphors. Run while you can.

So anyway. Knowledge is like legos. If you stick to only one thing in life, your legos form this gigantic tower that goes straight up. If you broaden your interests and learn more about other things, your legos form a pyramid. Both structures work, but one is far more solid than the other. Maybe a little harder to build though.

Ever since Greg Street/Ghostcrawler was hired as a lead designer people wondered how and why a dude with a PhD in marine science could become a lead developer on one of the largest MMORPGs in history. They, of course, conveniently ignore the fact that he was a developer for other major game titles – but let’s look at the other thing here. Why WOULDN’T they hire someone with interests and experience outside of the gaming field?

If I looked at WoW as just a WoW player, I would be severely limiting my experience with it. I am such a broad compilation of opinions and experiences that to consider myself only a “WoW player” would be doing a disservice. If you look at yourself as only a WoW player while you play the game, I challenge your perception of that.

When I experience and parse this game I do so as:

A working woman, an artist, a writer, a skeptic, a fantasy buff, a fan of corgis, a fan of pop culture, a bear enthusiast, etc.

All of these things and all of these experiences play into how and why I play the game the way I do. This allows me to understand and enjoy changes like LFR, for example. It also allows me to see certain things that happen and say, “I am not okay with this.”

If you’ve only played one class for 7 years, you probably know a lot about it. You may think you know what does and does not work, and how it could be better. But you’re coming from an extremely limited perspective. I wouldn’t tell people how to heal on their priests if I didn’t have a lot of experience with it, but at the same time I chose to broaden my horizons and level one of every type of healer so I could use that knowledge to make myself better overall.

I realized I needed to do this when I first got the Maw of the Dragonlord from Deathwing. I was used to standing super far away from the group and just chaining my heals as priests typically do. I noticed that my mace proc (the extra healing to people nearby) wasn’t hitting as many people as I wanted it to. I mentioned this in guild and someone said, “Oh yeah, you have to learn to heal like a paladin and be in closer range.”

At first I was perplexed, but then it resonated with me. I DIDN’T know how to heal like a paladin. Or a druid. Or a shaman. And because of that I had never thought of that as a solution and learning how to be more like another class would have never occurred to me unless the obvious was pointed out. That was when I knew that I was clearly missing out on something that would ultimately make me a better player and a more knowledgeable person.

If you’ve only played one faction, you probably know a lot about that faction. But the game isn’t about one faction and you’re missing out by not seeing the other side of the hill.

People fear not being good at something they are genuinely trying at. Somewhere along the way being a jack of all trades but master of none became some kind of negative thing. I disagree. You don’t have to be a master of something or know everything about it to bring some genuinely good ideas to the table for it. It’s not even so much about thinking out of the box as it is bringing an unexpected perspective that could end up being a game changer.

The more experiences and perspectives you have as a person and a player, the better. One of the lead designers has a PhD in marine science instead of computer programming and spent years in that field before turning to video games. I’d be willing to bet those different perspectives were exactly what Blizzard was looking for when they brought him aboard. Obviously you want someone who still has the knowledge of the field to get the job done, but more of the same never gets anything done.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that you need to stop looking at yourself as JUST a WoW player or a gamer. That is a single part of a larger whole, and the more perspectives and experience you can bring to the table – the better. You are a whole person, and the reasons you like and play this game are because of that. Embrace it.

This also doesn’t just apply to WoW, either. It applies to every facet of your life.

Things To Do Before Mists

With Mists of Pandaria right around the corner I’ve been struggling to get certain things done before it releases. I hit my “end of expansion” lull and just stopped logging in except to raid and occasionally run for transmog gear. I doubt I’m alone in this. After watching the beta forums and blue posts it’s become clear that MoP is on its way sooner than people might think. In the past I’ve usually been woefully under-prepared for new expansion launches, so this time I’m being proactive and trying to get certain things done before launch.

I figured I would share my goals here to help people who may have also fallen into the lull get motivated to start prepping for the expansion. The things I’m doing to prepare are:

1) Level my fishing skill to max.

Okay, have you ever tried leveling fishing? It’s awful. It’s almost as bad as archaeology except there’s less flying all over the continents. But that’s partially the point. As someone who previously raided fairly frequently and never leveled fishing, I usually found myself having to shell out the money for food/fish I was too lazy to farm up myself.

Bingo. Goldmine.

So my goal is to cash in on people who were like me and fish, fish, FISH come mists. Oh you need buff food? Gold first, eats later. Mahahaha!

Given the cyclical nature of expansions, the first few months where people are struggling to level themselves and their crafting skills up are the best time to make money if you’re on top of things.Since fishing is absolutely abysmally slow and tedious to level, very few people worry with it first. And that’s what I’m counting on.

2) Farm up any remaining vanity pets I want.

With pet battles and a new pet capture/training mechanic on the horizon, I’m doing my best to farm up pets the only way I know how. I’m not good with change, so the longer I can get pets the way I’m used to – the better.

It’s even better if you farm up multiple pets, because I’m guessing that once the expansion has a release date there will be a scramble for people to try and buy/farm the pets they want. Pets like the red, blue, and green whelplings have always been popular and high priced, so if you can stand the tedium of farming it might be worthwhile to get out there and get some.

3) Level cooking to max

This one goes along the same lines as the fishing leveling. If something is tedious to do, the bets are good that some will be too lazy to do it. And those people are the ones you make money off of with buff foods.

4) Farm up some rare mounts.

Gonna just let the picture speak for itself on this one.

5) Level my alts.

Leveling alts before an expansion is always a great idea because it helps you access more tradeskills. With mounts and pets going accountbound in MOP now is a really great time to get started on leveling your new fun projects. Especially since most people don’t have anything left to spend their points on. Heirlooms are awesome, and you can always grab a few for any potential monks or pandas you’re thinking of leveling!

Welp, that’s it from me for now. What are you guys doing to prepare for Mists?

Exercise While Raiding? Can It Be Done?

One of the newest exercise fads going around involves tying some basic exercise moves to mundane tasks. For example, my workplace has started encouraging us to do things like squats, pushups, and situps every time we finish with a phone call. Now clearly they’re looking for ways to lower our insurance premiums, but the idea at its heart is a good one. People in general tend to forget to exercise during the day, and even a small amount can go a long way towards living a healthier lifestyle.

I don’t believe in the stigma of unhealthy gamers, because I find that a hobby is a hobby and it’s the people who live the lifestyle. So I don’t want anyone to assume this post is based on that stereotype. With Summer right around the corner I’ve taken a look at myself and realized just how many bad habits I’ve gotten into. I do try to exercise daily, but “trying” and “doing” are two completely different things.

So the other night as we were raiding Dragon Soul, I noticed that my guild has – well – particular quirks that we do on a semi-regular basis. Then I wondered if, maybe, the idea of combining the workplace exercise plans with raiding would work out at all. With the new raid style Blizzard has introduced, most people are clearing DS in a night or less without long pauses in between. What if we took some basic exercises and applied them to things we do in the raid? Obviously this isn’t going to help people shed 50 lbs in a week, but maybe if we all make an effort to group up and get off our collective butts during the time we spend together, we can segue back into a slightly more active lifestyle.

Everyone’s guild is different, but I know that almost all of them have their own inside jokes. I’d encourage everyone to tailor these plans to their guild’s eccentricities to make it a little more fun. For example, my guild has a sweet little gnome lady that tends to say the most innocent, yet abstractly hilarious things I’ve ever heard. At least once a raid she’ll say something that has me rolling. I could easily tie a quick set of jumping jacks to her funny comments, and that way I get to laugh AND exercise.

So here’s a quick rundown of a plan I thought of. I don’t expect anyone to follow it to the letter, and I’d hope that people would take ownership of their own plans and maybe help their guilds get started with it as well. If you are unsure of how to do some of these exercises, please head here or try searching for them!

1) Down a raid boss – 30 seconds of marching in place. (Believe it or not, marching briskly in place can really get your blood pumping. Try it if you don’t believe me!)

2) Win loot off a boss – 3-5 quick squats.

3) Die during a boss fight – 3 push-ups. (if you are unable to do push-ups on the floor, you can try doing them against a wall!)

4) A complete raid wipe – 5 push-ups for everybody in the raid.

5) Thrall says something – 3 lunges while he finishes rambling.

6) Finish the final raid encounter – 5 lunges after loot has been distributed.

7) Sky Captain Swayze says, “Our engines are damaged! We’re sitting ducks up here.” – 2 very quick jumping jacks.

8) Count the number of times Warmaster Blackhorn does disrupting shout – when the fight is finished, do that amount of situps.

9) Yorsahj absorbs red and green slimes – 10 situps when the boss fight is finished.

10) A useful trinket actually drops – 15 jumping jacks for whoever wins it.

Remember that before exercising it usually helps to stretch, but these short bursts of movement shouldn’t be too bad as long as you’re not going overboard with over-exertion.

Once you get the feel of an exercise plan, maybe also start considering other things during your day that can help you get off your feet a little more. Walking around the block, taking the stairs, etc. The general recommendation is at least an hour of a decent workout a day to stay at top physical alertness. I’ve incredibly guilty of falling short of that recommendation, so I’m going to make an effort to change that.

I’d love to see people tailor these towards their specific raid groups, or even post more ideas in the comments!

Also, I apologize for not updating as much lately and for this not being a beta post. Life has just been a bit hectic for the last month or so!